Ask HN: Does this 'local web' tool exist yet? - <AUTHOR> If something like this exists, I want to use use it. If not, maybe I want to open source something. Pasted from my idea log as follows:<p>premise: a local internet that has a lot of curated resources -If  there was an apocalyptic event, this is the database you would want<p>-it is possible today to have an entirely local version of the web that would amaze anyone from early 2000. -premise is there is no worry about ip/copyright - it's a hypothetical -Can be updated, added to, shared, can run with minimal components, can run on its own os -can store massive amounts of data on a tape drive if needed, index it well and copy blocks to a large hard disk or solid state drive. Lots of ram (64gb+) for fast searching of active blocks<p>• Encyclopedic data 	• edu sites 	• original articles/newspaper articles 	• backups of abstracts from as many studies as possible 	• stack overflow, other similar sites 	• text of reddit, submissions with scores above 10 	• copies of classic books and technical books/nonfiction 	• Top 200 movies, best tv shows full series - various levels of compression as needed 	• most useful youtube videos, ted talks, best documentaries 	• Links to the most useful software, highly compressed files,etc 	• Compilers and IDEs for all common programming languages and learning resources 	• datasheets for components by number, etc. 	• Top music by year, genre, album, etc. roms and emulators for many systems <comment><USER2> These stuff exists, but it usefulness depends on the administrators.

I was really surprised when a couple of years ago visiting Tigre, a city north of Buenos Aires, argentina:

There is a huge river delta there, the Tigre delta and the people living in the small islands formed by the many branches of the river have a sort of local internet with their own news sites, wiki, etc... as well as access to the worldwide internet.

Another interesting fact is that some of this island houses have electricity but no drinkable water, they have to carry it from the city docks

<comment><AUTHOR> This is fascinating. I've heard of these local internets in remote areas. I'd love something along those lines for my own personal enjoyment and to give access to my friends.

I might go to def con this weekend and hit up the data duplication village

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There used to be a program called Teleport Pro, which can download an entire web site.

I used it rather extensively to download interesting sites for local storage, so i got a large selection of pages, a lot of which do not exist any more.

Then i moved from dial-up to something faster around 2007, and the habit to download the sites gradually died out. Most of them are pre-2009, and the latest one is from 2014.

I suppose making a new/free program like that might be of use today - the old one can't parse modern sites too well, i.e. Wikipedia.

<comment><USER4> Try the recursive options of wget. It should be pretty much what you are talking about.

<comment><USER3> Huh, i was going to say that wget won't fix the links in the downloaded files, but turns out they thought of it too.

Nice, that means the tool does exist already.

<comment><AUTHOR> Check my response above, feedback appreciated. downloading entire websites via wget isn't what I was getting at although that type of tech is certainly something that would be integrated into the hypothetical system.

What I am thinking of would really go beyond what you could achieve with wget. No doubt offline browsing and personal crawlers have been around for a while. Think of a 10TB+ tivo-like device that comes pre loaded with everything from wikipedia to musicBrainz. People would't need to figure out what to download, it would already be there, and they could augment it with anything.

Just a thought - I am going to keep looking into it and will create a public repo for it if it makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something relevant [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lantern-one-device- free-d...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lantern-one-device-free-data- from-space-forever)

Which sources content from [https://outernet.is/](https://outernet.is/)

<comment><AUTHOR> cool concept, nice find. I want something like this that I can host, no satellites needed, I can customize, let friends connect remotely, be able to do really cool searches using regex, have some big databases, etc.

I guess it's along the lines of scraping/crawling/local browsing, etc. Basically creating my own internet that I can invite people to, annotate, collaborate in, etc.

I'm working on an open communications platform at the moment and am contemplating creating a microservice to enable something like this - but I don't want to reinvent the wheel if someone has already done it well.

<comment><USER5> I think you should definitely do it unless it takes years to ship the first version. The first in market doesn't mean the first to succeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true. I'm not concerned about being first to market or making any profit on this type of project, would just be open source and release under GPL or whatever is appropriate.

I just didn't want to spend the time or effort doing it if a similar alternative already existed. My primary motivation is essentially just wanting the tool for myself and friends.

Not sure how long it would take but I might be able to release a useable proof of concept after a 3-day-weekend hackathon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wikipedia seems to fulfill a fair amount of your requirements. Add in Project Gutenberg...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah wikipedia would be part of something like this. I already have all their data dumps and I have a lot of other cool DBs like musicBrainz, lots of stack exchange stuff, some "top" movies lists, lots of books, etc. I like to hoard data and hd space is cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know of any such curated collection, but a good tool to build what you are describing would be IPFS: [https://ipfs.io](https://ipfs.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> I had no idea this even existed. This would be extremely helpful.</comment></comment>


The worst time to join a startup is right after it gets initial VC financing - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdixon.org/?p=363 <comment><USER3> Depends on if you want equity or not. If you are consultant, the absolute best time to join a startup is after they get funding. It means low risk of bounced checks. Several very bad mistakes consulting for prefunded startups leads me to this conclusion.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. The VCs would expect the startup to spend the capital on growing the business quickly, and if that means hiring consultants and paying them a top rate then so be it. In fact, the startup would get in trouble with their financiers if they didn't do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am certainly no expert, but this doesn't seem surprising for three reasons.

\- Significant investment means significant external validation for the company's chances of success. It also theoretically raises its chances of success. it isn't some idea that nobody would fund.

\- Before investment the company is comprised of some work that has been done & some ideas. After investment, the company is more work and money. It's bigger.

\- They can afford to pay salaries.

Can someone explain why this post doesn't just mean penny stocks are better the blue chips?

<comment><USER6> Exactly, because of those 3 points above the new employee also takes on significantly less risk in comparison to joining pre-Series A. It's very logical and I don't really get what the OP was trying to explain.

<comment><USER7> That the risk is systematically undervalued post-Series A; funding isn't magic. If you join the same company the day before a term sheet turns up, you do a lot better financially, and it's the same idea, team, market risk. If they're OK then the odds of getting funded are decent; if they're not, being funded won't save you...

<comment><USER5> If you buy stock the day before it goes up...

<comment><USER7> But we're not talking about stock: we're talking about whether to take a job or not. When you invest your time in a small company, you're making the same decisions as you were the day before Series A; does the product work? Can the team I'm joining deliver? Is there a market?

VCs have more experience, so, sure, their judgement is worth considering, but I'd want to trust my own intuition too...

<comment><USER8> Sure, but don't discount the fact that having the VC money is a non-trivial component of the company's success in many cases. So it's not just "is this a good team/business" but also "is this a good team/business and do they have enough runway to reach profitability?" The VC money doesn't change the first half of that equation, but it changes the second half.

In other words: would you join an awesome team that's about to run out of cash? How about joining an awesome team with an 18 month runway? The answers to those are going to be very different.

<comment><USER7> Sure, that's absolutely true; am there, doing that, hoping for the T-shirt.

All these things get set up as dichotomies when they aren't. All I'm really meaning is that "oh, they've got funded" feels like a pretty limiting way of deciding whether you think a startup will be be a winner or not, compared to meeting with your potential colleagues and kicking the tyres yourself - <USER2> the premium you get for guessing right if you throw in with the pre-Series-A team is actually pretty big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "This is pretty much the opposite of Wall Street's compensation schemes. To me, as a principle, that means it's probably a good idea.."

priceless

</comment><comment><USER10> Uh, one word: paycheck.

</comment><comment><USER11> I just joined a startup that recently received funding (although not in the 2M range). If they hadn't received some venture capital I don't know if I would have been up for the risk, I've got a family to take care of :-) Obviously there's still risk involved, but feeling pretty confident that my paychecks are going to clear is good.

</comment><comment><USER12> I read previously (on here) that pre-money engineers tend to get shafted. Would somebody in the know please opine?</comment>


Measuring clout (the people who spread ideas) on the web - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/clout.html

<comment><USER2> Any kind of clout measuring will lead to massive gaming.

Technorati attempted to measure the clout of blogs. Was gamed. (Lot of probloggers asking their readers to add them to their technorati account.)

Twitter shows how many people you follow and how many follow you back. It is gamed.

Digg gives out clout measurement - how many % of your submissions reach the front page. It is gamed.

Clout measurement leads to gaming.

<comment><USER3> Advertising at least is honest about wanting your attention and being straightforward about paying money to get it. Hard to "game" a system that requires real money to play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In other words, let's redo PageRank, but instead of which pages link to my page, use who follows/reads/spreads/reworks my stuff. A good idea, but probably tough to implement without some kind of standard identity system. (What does "who" mean on the web?)</comment>


The BBC's fundamental misunderstanding of copyright - <AUTHOR> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk/bbc-fundamental-misunderstanding-copyright/ <comment><USER2> If you find some publisher boosting your content, invoice them!

Early this year Computerworld took an image off my website to illustrate an article. I sent them a polite note saying that my single-use fee for the image was $250. It took me a little while to find the right person, but they eventually apologized for the error and sent me a check. It was a pleasant moral victory.

For the curious, their article:

[https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9203159/Cubicle_wars...](https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9203159/Cubicle_wars_Best_and_worst_office_setups_for_tech_workers)

And mine:

<http://www.scissor.com/resources/teamroom/>

<comment><USER3> Is your single-use fee always 250 USD or did you ask a higher number because they took it without your permission?

<comment><USER2> I just made up a number that would be non-negligible, both for them and in relation to my time spent pursuing them. I have no idea what photographers actually charge for this sort of thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> last comment on page:

Chris Hamilton - BBC News Social Media Editor says: August 13, 2011 at 3:37 pm

We're checking out the complaint response quoted above but, on the face of it, it's wrong and isn't the position of BBC News.

In fact, we make every effort to contact people, as copyright holders, who've taken photos we want to use in our coverage.

In exceptional situations, ie a major news story, where there is a strong public interest in making a photo available to a wide audience, we may seek clearance after we've first used it.

We want to do right by potential contributors and our audience – it's not in our interests to annoy them – and this is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of that.

<comment><USER5> > _In exceptional situations, ie a major news story, where there is a strong > public interest in making a photo available to a wide audience, we may seek > clearance after we've first used it._

We try to follow the law, but sometimes it's just too inconvenient for our needs.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure there's fair-use exceptions for copyright law when there is no suitable alternative to a copyrighted work, and the work is necessary for some (possibly limited) use. See: news agencies historically using amateur photographs/video, every album cover/movie poster used on Wikipedia.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that's a very valid point that I hadn't considered. I'm quite sure that a news organization like BBC News could make a convincing case for necessity of use in a lot of "breaking news" type situations.

<comment><USER7> I recall that fair use laws in some countries explicitly mention issue of using copyrighted content in news stories / for public information.

Unfortunately quick googling didn't find anything useful, and the wikipedia article is surprisingly worthless:

 _While many other countries recognize similar exceptions to copyright, only the United States and Israel fully recognize the concept of fair use._

Seriously?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Awesome. Since the BBC is also "available to most people who have a computer," surely they would agree that "any content on it is not subject to the same copyright laws as it is already in the public domain".

Pardon me while I write a script to upload all their photos to a stock image site. Royalties, here I come!

</comment><comment><USER8> In the instances I've seen the BBC use Twitter/YouTube media, I would say it'd fall under fair use.

That's fine but the thing that's most concerning about the post is the complete nonsense inside the auto-generated reply. If there was any official dispute on the BBC's usage of media from the social networks, I doubt this will help them.</comment>


Scylla Scaled to One Billion Rows a Second - <AUTHOR> https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/12/how-scylla-scaled-to-one-billion-rows-a-second/ <comment><AUTHOR> It includes a brief history of benchmarking scale. Let me know if we missed any performance numbers that you think are particularly impressive!</comment>


What Comes After Rich Baby Boomers? Kids With a Big Inheritance - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/baby-boomers-inheritance.html?ref=your-money

<comment><USER2> This is one of the more whiny-er pieces I've read from the NYT.

There's going to be rich people out there. Get over it and stop acting like the cards are always stacked against you. Yeah, it sucks not being loaded. Yeah, I wish I were rich. Sure, things would be easier. Do I spin my wheels thinking about the inheritance baby boomer kids will get from their rich parents? No. I'll spend my time thinking how I'll build my own 'empire'.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's time to talk about intergenerational wealth transfer as one of the key factors inhibiting social mobility in the US (which is lower than most other industrialized countries, and in fact the single greatest predictor in your wealth during your lifetime is your parents' wealth) (1)

It seems from an equity standpoint /and/ from a meritocracy standpoint we would do better as a country to inhibit intergenerational wealth transfer much more than it currently is to provide for a pot where kids inherit from society as a whole (whether that looks like investment into services like free education or whether it looks like a basic savings account releasable to all children on tehir 18th birthday is left up to discussion)

(1) [http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2013/06/13-facts-h...](http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2013/06/13-facts- higher-education)

<comment><USER4> One of the reasons people continue to work long after they have enough money for the rest of their life is the promise that they can give their children the excess. I bet there are a bunch of unintended consequences in changing this incentive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kids with a big inheritance spend and invest far more than the people who made it. These are your future customers. These are your future investors.

<comment><USER6> They may also donate more and spread their wealth more effectively than the government, which funnels tax money into the military-industrial complex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> FYI an easy way to get around the nytimes paywall is to open the link in an incognito/private window (no cookies).

<comment><USER8> I got more useful information from this comment than from the article itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article doesn't do much to offer a solution (if you believe there's a problem). Inheritance taxes? Gift taxes? The article points out that most wealth disappears in 3 generations. Look at the Vanderbilts as an odd example. Cornelius knew the 3 generation rule, and left his entire fortune to his oldest son, leaving his daughter and other (mentally questionable) son out of his will. His son is considered a great business man, who expanded the empire. But even that vast wealth still disappeared 2 generations later, on Newport mansions and the "lifestyle".

Also, I'm amazed every time I read the stat that the top 1% owns 35% of the wealth, more than the bottom 90% owns. (Does that imply that the 9% upper class own up to 30% of the wealth?).

<comment><USER10> As to the question of wealth ownership, this pie chart from wikipedia may be helpful: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Distribution_of_Weal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Distribution_of_Wealth,_2007.jpg)

        The Top  1% owns 34.6% of the wealth
        The Top  5% owns 61.9% == 27.3% + 34.6%
        The Top 10% owns 73.1% == 11.2% + 61.9%
        The Top 20% owns 85.1% == 12.0% + 73.1%
        The Top 40% owns 96.0% == 10.9% + 85.1%</comment></comment>


Microsoft loss of credibility - <AUTHOR> http://industryinteractive.net/ideas/microsoft-and-trust/

<comment><USER2> From the article: they're constantly trying to play catch-up with others.

That hasn't changed. Microsoft has rarely been the first mover in a market. The difference nowadays is that consumers are becoming more educated. There was a time when an eight bit computer, a cruddy spreadsheet and a floppy drive compressed the tedium of an accountant from 38 hours per week to two hours per week. When that was the case, you could become part of a network effect or leverage an existing monopoly to sell bad knock-offs. It didn't matter if it crashed once per week because you'd still be four times more productive than doing the task manually.

Nowadays, expectations are higher, choices are wider and value lies elsewhere. Many people on this forum will remember when computer hardware and consumables were only available from specialist suppliers. That isn't the case anymore. Nor is it a de facto monopoly. Anyone in any major city can walk into a retailer and walk out with a computer that doesn't run Windows. Furthermore, anyone's nephew can install OpenOffice. People are now discovering that they can pay _less_ and gain a productivity advantage. Having control of your data is a fringe benefit which they rarely consider.

Microsoft now has to work extremely hard and an increasing number are disatisfied. Unfortunately, too many consumers remain grateful for minimal productivity gains. Unfortunately, too many consumers take vendor shenanegans at face value. Fortunately, an increasing number of consumers have become wary of encumbants with a long history of market abuse.</comment>


Four Canadian university students elected to Parliament - <AUTHOR> http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/05/four-mcgill-students-elected-to-parliament/

<comment><USER2> It goes to show that having the government chosen by accumulated individual local elections in kind of silly. Quebecois thought Layton did great in the French-language debate, wanted him as PM, and voted for whatever NDP was on their ballot locally. This resulted in oddities like a monolingual Anglophone being elected in a riding that is 80 percent monolingual Francophone. A mixed- member proportional system like they have in Germany would fix this -- you have separate votes for who you want to be your local rep and who you want to control the government.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hate to be the guy trying to kill the story, but this article absolutely doesn't belong here. It's political gossip. I really don't want to see this type of stuff when I come to HN, it's not even remotely "gratifying one's intellectual curiosity".

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic. "

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

Flag (and remove) please.

<comment><USER4> The guidelines also say:

"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is an article with more background about the people that were elected. [http://www.vancouversun.com/news/decision- canada/Five+McGill...](http://www.vancouversun.com/news/decision- canada/Five+McGill+students+elected/4723336/story.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think inexperience in the NDP is really going to be much of an issue initially. Given that the Conservatives now have a majority, even a veteran opposition would have a hard time being effective.

Hopefully, we'll see these "kids" bring some enthusiasm and idealism to parliment.

</comment><comment><USER7> What do four college kids, a cage fighter, a bartender, and a musician have in common?

(I don't know)

Jack Layton doesn't know either.

<comment><USER7> Oh come on, it's not a criticism of the NDP so much as having a chuckle at such a strange election outcome. It's also proof that people don't actually care about the MP they are voting for. People only vote based on party.

I'm an NDP supporter, but even I can find a reason to laugh at this whole thing. I still think it's positive, however.

<comment><USER8> I'd say people vote more for the party's leader. But yeah, they don't care about the MP.

<comment><USER9> Why should they? Parliamentary government is essentially a dictatorship of the prime minister. Government MPs are barely relevant, much less opposition MPs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's surprising the 'Bloc' no longer has such a political influence. Have Quebec's secessionist ambitions been quelled?

<comment><USER11> No, in fact there's a good chance that the Parti Quebecois will win the next provincial election. Separatism still has mass support in Quebec.

<comment><USER12> The separatism issue is far from over in Quebec. The NDP is the hero of the day or shall we say a "testing of the waters". If Quebec doesn't like this test, they'll banish the NDP is quick as they came in, and it will not surprise me in the least if the PQ win the provincial election as well.

Blame Canada! (Southpark)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Awesome news! Isn't it pretty unprecedented for students to be elected to parliament?

<comment><USER7> Nope, there was a 20 year old elected in the 70s. But what is unprecedented is the sheer amount of people who got in this election who are, what some would say, unqualified.

Me, I'm happy about having fresh people in parliament who have yet to become politicians.

<comment><USER12> Although is wasn't my favourite politician (for my own provincial reasons shall we say) Brian Tobin started out very young. I believe he was in university or dropped out and was on a local radio station for a bit. One has to respect his accomplishments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Although this sounds like great news, I'd suggest it's not. Reasons being, yes it brings energy to government, but also inexperience. Further, it shows the ridiculousness of "elected representatives" when no one has heard of them (they're elected because their party is wanted in government, not because of their particular talents in politics as individuals) and as one commentator says, the representative didn't even turn up at their own celebration. Democracy in it's current form in Canada is a joke.

<comment><USER7> I'd rather see the bright side of having some people who aren't politicians in politics, rather than yet more lawyers and businessmen who will likely vote primarily along their own interests rather than along actual idealism.</comment></comment>


The MUFFIN, a new tasty user interface concept for LibreOffice - <AUTHOR> https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/12/21/the-document-foundation-announces-the-muffin-a-new-tasty-user-interface-concept-for-libreoffice/ <comment><USER2> I didn't see any install options on the link?</comment>


Vice News FCC Net Neutrality Vote Live Stream - <AUTHOR> https://www.pscp.tv/w/1yoKMMMQoykKQ# <comment><USER2> Ongoing discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15924794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15924794).

</comment><comment> 52-6F-62 "The internet is the greatest free market innovation in history." \- Ajit Pai

Someone needs a history lesson. I'm sorry, America, some of the talking points of the commissioners in support of repeal are maddening.

\---

At this time last year the CRTC made broadband internet access a basic service in Canada: [http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/crtc-internet-essential- serv...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/crtc-internet-essential- service-1.3906664)

edited a word for accuracy. Also:

>> 'Until now, local landline telephone service was the only service deemed "basic" or essential by the CRTC, although Blais has previously called internet service "vital" and essential to life and success.' (referring to CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais)

<comment><USER3> I'm ready for the ignorance of Americans on the internet to get a wake up call. It will be painful and difficult but a decision to revoke NN will force people to become familiar with meshnets/decentralization/encryption if they want any sort of freedom.

However, most will just accept the cattle feed and roam the fenced pasture.

<comment><USER4> There will be no wake up call because nothing is really going to change for the end user. All of this slippery slope nonsense about a walled off internet is just hysteria stoked by social media.

<comment> 52-6F-62 That's not the only effect the de-regulation can have.

See Comcast/BitTorrent: [https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691794/net- neutrality-...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691794/net-neutrality- fcc-ajit-pai-comcast-block-bittorrent)

See, Indosat in Indonesia: [https://imgur.com/gallery/nKZ2yeq](https://imgur.com/gallery/nKZ2yeq)

Better yet, MIT does a better job explaining:

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609594/the-demise-of- net-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609594/the-demise-of-net- neutrality-will-harm-innovation-in-america/)

<comment><USER4> Comcast could also just throw a 10 gig cap on your line regardless of whether net neutrality. It is not in Comcast's interest to cripple your internet usage as they'll just bleed customers to the wireless providers (who don't fall under net neutrality to begin with anyway).

I see the logic a bit with MIT's article, but at the same time most smaller startups are probably just piggy backing off of AWS anyway. Harvard business review has a good write-up here if you don't want a hyper-politicized Chicken Little take on it. [https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-tangled-web-of-net-neutrality- an...](https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-tangled-web-of-net-neutrality-and- regulation)

<comment> 52-6F-62 Maybe Wireless could be a solution, but maybe if one group leads the way, others may follow. The events that brought on the regulation were small, and increasing in influence and frequency.

I don't follow the "Chicken Little" take. I see it more as a downward slope. It will be introduced as a benefit at first—and whatever allows these kinds of companies a significant increase in margin, they will ultimately pursue. If there's something to be counted on in the whole mess it's greed (and, in turn, stock performance). In this way, corporate bodies have one permissible direction.

The wireless situation here in Canada would be more dire, as the same companies operating cable/sat television packages, internet, and wireless tend to be one of 4 conglomerates who own and operate a few subsidiaries. Outside of a small number of independents, we would ultimately be stuck. Considering those same conglomerates own most of the infrastructure, we might be stuck regardless who operates our consumer-level services. (edit) _Should_ something like this occur in Canada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "It's time to return control of the internet to the engineers" (not precise quote).

Like the engineers that created the internet who are protesting this vote?

<comment><USER6> His entire speech was full of whataboutisms (What about Google, Facebook, et. al censoring content), cherry picked comments and total ignorance of how competition doesn't actually exist in the consumer ISP business.

You think he wouldn't stoop to lying about engineers being anti-NN?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The one thing that gives me hope is the fact that e.g. Washington state is planning on defending it on the state level [https://www.geekwire.com/2017/washington-state-leaders- annou...](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/washington-state-leaders-announce- first-kind-plan-defend-net-neutrality-constituents/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Net Neutrality has been killed in a 3-2 vote.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why does he think all this is so funny!? Ugh!!!

<comment><USER10> It would be funny for him, since he and his friends will all profit from this heavily.

He's essentially laughing all the way to the bank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The amount this video is cutting out is making me feel how Net Neutrality will feel.

</comment><comment><USER12> :(

</comment><comment><USER13> The original stream is here,

[https://www.fcc.gov/general/live](https://www.fcc.gov/general/live)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm glad that this was decided by people who couldn't even figure out how to stream mono audio.

</comment><comment><USER15> This vote was made on November 8 2016.

Clinton was in favor of maintaining NN whereas Trump said that NN was burdensome regulations that need to be scrapped.

Trump won.

<comment><USER16> That's not at all how representative democracy works, and I suspect you know that. It's possible for a president to disagree with the regulatory decisions of a federal agency, because the agencies work for us, not the president.

<comment><USER17> FCC commission appointments have nothing to do with representative democracy, they're the domain of the president.

And the idea that anyone in government represents the people is naive. The US isn't a democracy, it's demonstrably an oligarchy: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on- poli...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on- politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups- and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/core-reader)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Periscope! Interesting!

</comment><comment><USER19> Security just cleared the room before the vote could happen. I didn't see that coming. Bomb threat?

<comment><USER20> Their was some loud voices there at the very end, but I couldn't catch what they were saying

<comment><USER21> "I need everyone to leave everything that you have in place – do not take anything out of here except for your bodies – I don't wanna see any bags, books or anything."

<comment><USER22> As and after he says this, all the visible attendees gather their belongings before heading to the exit.

<comment><USER6> Because who doesn't want to leave their $2K+ camera laying around for security goons to mess with. That said, when a potential bomb threat or other security issue has been called just leave the bag and get out of the room - your life isn't worth your belongings (even if 99% of the time stuff like this is just a false alarm).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> After pondering on this quandary I find myself not knowing which is more offensive, the fact that corporate money pours into politics and corrupts everything into a pile of shit, or the fact that revolving doors are legal. Pait was a Verizon executive. So those being regulated are now writing the regulations.

I really can't tell which horrendous act is worse.</comment>


Google Glass API Documentation - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/glass/ <comment><USER2> "Each step in human technological advancement provides improved methods for the distribution of cat photos. Project Glass is no different."

On a slightly more serious note, I'm glad to see this since I feared that they might keep the API for later, instead opting to try and make a "product" first (a la iPhone 1 or Google+).

This API is definitely not what I was envisioning though - I expected another API add-on to Android, where you can take over and do what you wish with the display, so perhaps it is a bit like webapps-as-apps on the iPhone 1. I'd be interested to see what early adopters do with it and if they find this API too limited.

<comment><USER3> I was also fairly disappointed, it looks like 5 out of 5 of my ideas for what I wanted to do with Glass can't be done with this API. But I'm hoping they wanted to get some basic / easier to implement API out as fast as possible while still working on more interesting support on a side (native apps, in particular).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is... pretty seriously disappointing, if it's supposed to be the whole thing (or close to the whole thing). I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're going to publish the rest later, and _not_ deliberately hobbling it to prevent the public from getting creeped out by the hardware's capabilities.

<comment><USER5> Keep in mind this is Google Mirror API documentation not Google Glass apps API.

Google Mirror API is for puting stuff in front of user eye. As far as I know you can not get information from Google Glass with this API.

<comment><USER6> you can get location information and interact with any media (text, photo, video) along with contacts via the api.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is so exciting. Just how a completely new user experience paradigm was uncovered when high quality touch screen devices like iPhone etc. first launched, this is yet another milestone in how we will continue to interact with the petabytes of data that we as mankind have digitized.

It's worth pondering how significantly new I/O devices change the game -- the first tty, the commercial keyboard & mouse, the touch screen, multi-touch trackpads, and voice activated smartphones.

<comment><USER8> Amazing technology aside, this is a pretty disappointing API release from a developer standpoint. Basically no access to Glass's amazing hardware, nor any way to receive user input other than a swipe/tap on the side? I'm really hoping it gets more comprehensive.

<comment><USER9> The Glass will surely be hacked six ways to Sunday but I doubt the official API will go much deeper than it already is.

The still-disappointing Plus API pretty much tipped Google's hand when it comes to how flexible they want to be on providing APIs for future products and on top of that there are some pretty substantial privacy issues with giving developers low-level access to the vast amount of personal data Glass will constantly be collecting. I'm already worried enough about Google having that data that I'm sitting out Glass for the foreseeable future (despite the fact that I suspect it will be useful for a lot things), but if random third parties could access that data at a low-level I'd be even more worried.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What would be nice is if Google released an Android app that does the same thing as Glass (ie. location updates and push notifications), for testing purposes. It wouldn't be as nifty as having the thing on your head, but pretty much all the use cases covered by the API would work on that.

<comment><USER11> They do, sort of: <https://developers.google.com/glass/playground>

It's a jsfiddle-like sandbox that behaves like a Glass (device) frontend.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I assume that works if you want to test how cards display, though there does not seem to be any interaction.

Considering the API only allows viewing cards, taking pictures, sending your current location and taking textual input, there's nothing that prevents them to have a glass implementation on Android to test things out, other than the time/resources to develop such an implementation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been a Google Glass skeptic. But I just got back from Mexico, where I was walking all over waving my phone at various signs so Word Lens could translate them for me... skeptic no more! Word Lens is a killer app for the platform. Except now I see that there's no API to access the camera. Seems like a huge mistake.

<comment><USER13> One of their example API uses includes users taking photo's with the built in camera and sharing them with your service. See "add a cat to that" <https://developers.google.com/glass/stories>

<comment><USER14> If the app has to take a photo at the user's behest everytime a word needs to be translated, it's going to be very clunky very fast.

The whole point of technologies like Glass is that they should be as unobtrusive as possible and just work by themselves when you need to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15>
      The Google Mirror API allows you to build web-based services, called Glassware, that interact with Google Glass. It provides this functionality over a cloud-based API and does not require running code on Glass.

This API is focused on pushing info to Glass, rather than interaction (which I assume will be later)

</comment><comment><USER16> Apparently, it is possible to setup your future Google Glass _today_ : <https://glass.google.com/setup>

<comment><USER17> I mean, you can go through and set up your network... but the setup process gets blocked when you need your actual device to sync.

<comment><USER18> > but the setup process gets blocked when you need your actual device to sync

Not entirely, it's obvious that it's just pinging some endpoint for a protocol buffer. The server will return a protocol buffer with a "continue" message, but you can just spoof that.

Also: who will get the first glass xss bounty?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone else having issues accessing the API? [https://code.google.com/p/google-glass- api/issues/detail?id=...](https://code.google.com/p/google-glass- api/issues/detail?id=2)

<comment><USER10> Yeah, having the same issue. Initially, I thought it was US only, but even with a VPN and fake US account it doesn't work.

<comment><USER20> As per the update to that issue, the API is currently only available to developers with physical access to Glass. It is a shame they didn't make this clearer on the developer documentation page itself...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Look hopefully they'll improve on this a lot, but lets be honest, this API is pathetic. If there are significant technical (power, weight, etc) reasons why this is all that can be done, then they probably aren't ready for prime time. I'm trying to stay positive and imagine the future for this product is bright, but wow wow wow this is bad.

</comment><comment><USER22> So screen resolution is 640 x 360px. Looks like lot of interesting applications can be build with that real estate! Weather, Maps etc. are some to come to my mind right away.

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't find any info on how to write a Glass app that actually interacts with the camera or does geolocation. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER16> You can get a user's geolocation (<https://developers.google.com/glass/location>). Couldn't find anything about the camera.

However, the API doesn't seem to offer any way to run code on the actual device aka "apps".

<comment><USER24> It looks like the Mirror API allows you to register callbacks, like Android Intents, to handle events like 'position changed' or 'new photo'. They're really locking down user interaction on the device itself, probably due to processor power, and to keep the experience consistent. Not that I agree with them, but they definitely look afraid of getting a bad name if some devs produce crap - hence the very limited scope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The specs on the display are pretty bad. In the API examples, the one with the most text is the shopping list with 5 lines of short text. I want to look at longer text on a HUD device. Is this a limitation in the ability to create HUD hardware with higher resolution. Also, can someone with experience in this area explain the pros / cons in the "how it appears" spec? I'm talking about the spec where they say "looks like a X size display X distance away" Here's 2 HUD specs:

Glass: 640X360 25" HD display from 8 ft Vuzix M100: 400X240 4" mobile screen at 14"

If I place a ~4" mobile device 14" from the top right of my field of vision, I think I could live with that amount of obscured vision, but is it feasible to create that with 720p resolution? Why would you want a 25" display 8ft away? That seems like it would just be good for placing display ads and not really for most useful things aside from quick notifications.

</comment><comment><USER26> Client libs for Java, Python, Go, PHP, .NET, Ruby, Dart but no JavaScript?

<comment><USER27> Go? This is awesome to hear. Unlike Android, Glass will be an instant win for us Gophers. ( Well, once they have crossed 1m+ devices-sold so that the potential audience for hackery becomes _actually interesting_ )

<comment><USER28> This could be a chance for Go to become more mainstream, if there wasn't so many languages supported, but I guess is not Google's agenda to disseminate their own lang.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is anyone else having trouble enabling the Mirror API in their developer console? It doesn't show up in mine after creating a new project for it.

<comment><USER30> I'm having the same issue

<comment><USER31> I believe those who have Glass are the only ones who can get an API key.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I had been wondering about this spec:

      Send full screen images and video at a 16x9 aspect ratio.
      Target a 640x360 pixel resolution.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm hoping there's an easy 'be quiet' option. They're 100% right that apps shouldn't be spammy, but we additionally need a standardised option to mute or uninstall apps with a couple of swipes. It's the most walled garden ever, but for something like this with so much potential for spammer abuse, I think we need it. At least they'll be hackable.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if they also plan to allow native apps eventually.

</comment><comment><USER34> So... no augmented reality with this API. Sad.

</comment><comment><USER35> Does this mean they are going to start shipping for the glassexplorer program ?

<comment><USER36> Yes. They will be shipped in batches, as they come off the production line.

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/15/first-google-glass- devices-...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/15/first-google-glass-devices-are- coming-off-the-production-line-now-will-ship-in-batches/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I am sure glass has GPS, does it have accelerometers as well?

<comment><USER38> and compass for direction would be useful

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can anyone get the demo to work? I'm getting a 500. <https://glass-java- starter-demo.appspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER40> hm... only support for java and python. I hope they release a version for Go since it is Google's language.

<comment><USER41> [https://developers.google.com/glass/downloads/#client_librar...](https://developers.google.com/glass/downloads/#client_libraries)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I used to think it was ethically questionable to add cameras and trackers to wild animals just so we could investigate their habits. Now human animals are doing this to themselves voluntarily.</comment>


So riseup WAS under gag order - <AUTHOR> https://riseup.net/en/canary <comment><USER2> The text wrapping on that page is painful to read.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I tried bringing attention to this in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13344039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13344039)

At least two people replied in the vein of "nothing to see here".

Now they have finally updated their canary statement (this was back in 16 Feb 2017).

They have added the following text:

> Q: Why didn't you update your canary on time in the winter of 2016?

> A: The canary was so broad that any attempt to issue a new one would be a > violation of a gag order related to an investigation into a DDoS extortion > ring and ransomware operation[0]. This is not desirable, because if any one > of a number of minor things happen, it signals to users that a major thing > has happened.

So, in my mind here's the lessons:

A) ignore missing canary statements at your own peril

B) orgs that have sloppy canary releases devalue their canary statements.</comment>


NSA Cyber Unfetter Project - <AUTHOR> https://nsacyber.github.io/unfetter/ <comment><USER2> Good of them to release this, and I have a dog in the race about getting people to think higher-level about security, but ATT&CK, STRIDE and other frameworks tend to be solipsistic, self propagating bullshit.

I would also argue that quantitative security risk models serve mainly as a corporate laundering system to obfuscate risk, do not have any meaningful predictive power, and that security compliance has become a make-work field for the unskilled, whose role is to be both an easy mark and a scapegoat for reckless corporate behaviour.

Hopefully it will mature to where designers and engineers themselves build in mitigations, the way some of them have with environmental and safety risks, but as a business, I think security is due for some scrutiny.

<comment><USER3> >ATT&CK, STRIDE and other frameworks tend to be solipsistic, self propagating bullshit.

Not disagreeing with you, but I was was wondering if you could expand on this. In some circles, ATT&CK is seen as the gold standard. Do you believe this is misguided?

<comment><USER4> I've been happy to see ATT&CK, yet in practice avoided as a lot of compliance effort for limited value when that same effort can go elsewhere.

The good:

\-- Auditing & tuning defense in depth: From a testing/verification perspective, defense in depth should follow both your organizational structure (endpoint, network, cloud, virtualization layers, etc.) and, to economically optimize, double down around attack structure. ATT&CK compliance gives a goahead for auditing your system + vendors for holes in the latter.

\-- N+1 standard: Most Elastic/Splunk/etc. SIEM implementations I've seen are half-implemented dirty data messes. The world failed to agree on past efforts like CIM, CEF, CVE, STIX, etc. ATT&CK compliance is auditing your data lake for better SIEM standardization, and an N+1 effort to get folks to agree. If ATT&CK gets you signoff for cleaning your lake, great!

\-- Training: A surprisingly large portion of defenders are junior or overly specialized (endpoint vs network vs cloud vs malware vs...)

The bad:

\- Expensive. It doesn't solve much more than the above. I'm much more inclined to spend the $ and effort on better data processing & automation & intelligence capabilities instead. Likewise, for auditing, spend time/money on manual + automated red team, or ATT&CK? For big banks & gov, it's more ok b/c the answer is "giant budget; do both."

\- Dead end / stepping stone . For the ontological aspect, manual killchain taxonomization is good, but for mapping to real-world data, my sense was, and has only increased, that a lot of that effort needs to be shifted towards (a) centralized logging efforts like Azure Sentinel / Google Chronicle's cloud SIEM's do it for you rather than admin running Splunk/ELK (b) combining w/ ML techniques (BERT?) instead of both the parsing and categorization being 100% manual.

I may be especially attuned to the problem b/c teams come to Graphistry when they realize their SIEM is a mess and can't quickly see stuff like killchains, so are striving for next-level thinking. So we get to see a lot of the many ways manual / rule-based n+1 standards here go wrong. At the same time, I'm optimistic b/c of the automation+ML world we're increasingly in. (Semantic web vs. Google search.)

More on the positive side, we've been working on some anti-misinformation work in covid ProjectDomino.org, and an ATT&CK-like mapping of misinformation has been helpful. Defense in that world is a lot earlier in the understanding needed for automatic detection & response, so manual taxonimization is a good early step.

<comment><USER5> Wish I had time to comment on all your points.

Central logging efforts with chronicle/sentinel always result in a ton of data loss. On prem is cheap and works well. Elastic/Graylog solve this well. Whether it is sentinel,chronicle or so many of the others in this market, they simply don't and never will know your environment well enough. This will always stab you in the back with the double edged sword of a) losing contextual detail that would have let you make better decisions b) Losing control over data transformation and detection/alerting logic,which means they do too good of a job in suppressing false positives that you miss bad stuff,they generate too many false alerts that waste precioud man hours,many of which could be tuned out(the bureaucracy of a 3rd party,even with admin access to their rules will always be crippling).

In short, my opinion is that you need a fast failing and agile seceng(devsecops?) cycle where you have all the data (logs and enrichment) at your disposal. Your people that spend a lot of time juggling false positives could instead contribute to this, which will result in good alert fidelity and more free time for threat research and hunting! (The fun stuff!!)

<comment><USER4> We're talking about slightly different things: you're thinking cloud vs. on- prem, while I mean no longer giving SIEM vendors a free pass for crappy parsing & classification of most data and pushing that to users. Running the SIEM via a managed cloud happens to make this easier, but not actually 100% required (e.g., federated learning.)

Historically, Splunk, Elastic, and other SIEM vendors abdicated most responsibilities here despite marketing that suggest they're good at ingest/parsing/correlation across different products ("single pane of glass"). Requiring IT/security teams to do parsing + classification across an ever- changing stack of client/server apps + security tools is a lot of work given the ever-increasing list of other responsibilities they have, and a gross duplication of effort across organizations. The result has meant a lot of incompletely configured systems, a big blocker on most data & automation efforts ("garbage in / garbage out"), and burning internal team time + professional service dollars on week 1 stuff. In contrast, not so hard for a vendor to amortize parsing across all its users. (Which Microsoft and Google are pushing towards, afaict.)

And agreed, teams should be able to iterate on the interesting stuff, not reinventing the wheel on parsing winlogs/apache/netflow/zeek/palo alto/etc and normalizing them to the taxonomy of the year. To the original point about ATT&CK, teams should be training & labeling & sharing models, while ATT&CK is informal ideas (very 1970s/1980s) and manual SIGMA rules (very 1990s/2000s), yet we know that is unreliable and too much work to maintain & grow. They need to be able to quickly work w/ feature engineering teams, not work in ignorance of them nor in isolation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Been down this road before, much harder than it looks. MITRE techniques can be deceptive in that you think you can detect on a technique but that is true only for the specific attack scenario. Example: you can detect anomalous scheduled task creation, but is it because you are looking for specific command lines? If so, why can't attackers just use .NET ? You can detect cred dumping because procdump.exe or wce.exe is seen,but what you are not looking for process handles to lsass. It can lead to a false sense of security if you're not careful.

From a threat hunting and detection perspective, I am so glad they are sharing this tool. It becomes very tedious very fast when you take things like this and apply them against the highly nuanced context of your environment.

</comment><comment><USER6> What's with all the typos on the web site? e.g. "Unfetter Discover: Analyze seucrity gaps and explore adversary tradecraft" or "Unfetter Disocover".

If the goal is to foster adoption these tells scream "disorganized and unprofessional".

<comment><USER7> Especially when the NSA still has a lot of trust building to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> GitHub docs lead to [http://unfetter.io/](http://unfetter.io/) which leads to a GoDaddy landing page...

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://github.com/unfetter- discover/unfetter/issues/1613](https://github.com/unfetter- discover/unfetter/issues/1613)

Looks like the project may be abandoned? Time for a fork?

</comment><comment><USER10> (2018) [https://github.com/unfetter- discover/unfetter/commits/master](https://github.com/unfetter- discover/unfetter/commits/master)

<comment><USER11> Looks like there's been no work on it since 2018 either.

<comment><USER12> There's also this:

[http://www.iad.gov/iad/library/](http://www.iad.gov/iad/library/)

"The IAD.gov library is no longer being updated as of October 1, 2018. NSA Cybersecurity (formerly "information assurance") information from October 1, 2018 onward will be available at [http://www.nsa.gov/what-we- do/cybersecurity."](http://www.nsa.gov/what-we-do/cybersecurity.")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> OK seriously we need to have a talk about this whole 'posture' thing.

<comment><USER14> Can you elaborate? My understanding is your security posture determines how well you mitigate, identify, contain, and repel attacks.

<comment><USER13> In the same way your sales posture determines how well you identify, qualify and convert leads and your product posture determines how well you design, execute and market-fit your products - yet somehow we never felt the need to add 'posture' to these.

The end result is another obfuscation layer of corporate-speak on something that should be pretty concise and bullshit-free.</comment></comment></comment>


C/C++ rule of the week - <AUTHOR> http://codergears.com/QACenter/index.php?qa=323&qa_1=if-you-can-exit-a-function-early-you-should

<comment><USER2> Saving you a click: "If you can exit a function early, you should."

which is fine if you don't have resources that need to be cleaned on exit and you can't keep them in objects that just fall off the stack.</comment>


Surviving a helicopter water landing - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2018/03/13/the-astar-fuel-shutoff-lever-and-surviving-a-helicopter-water-landing/ <comment><USER2> If you ever find yourself with the opportunity to do water egress training, do it; it's a life changing experience (IMHO) even if you never intend to fly in a helicopter.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article. It never occured to me that someone might accidentally yank the fuel cutoff and die as a result.</comment>


Inspect This Snake - <AUTHOR> https://matthewrayfield.com/goodies/inspect-this-snake/ <comment><USER2> Quick way (Linux FF/Chrome at least): CTRL+SHIFT+C[0], click the snake. (arrow keys)

[0] I _wish_ I had to look that up, but no. That's the shortcut for "Copy" in my terminals and I frequently CTRL+SHIFT+C VSCode, which usually elicits a quick four-letter one under my breath.</comment>


Can chatbot programming save computer science? - <AUTHOR>

I think chatbots hold enormous promise in raising interest in computer science.
The reason is that they allow programming for the masses.  Even if a chatbot language is not Turing complete, people could still get a feeling for what it's like to program a computer.
Of course spreadsheets have been doing this for a long time, but chatbots are way more fun.
And unlike Logo's Turtle Graphics, chatbot programming is not math-oriented and will appeal to a larger number of people. <comment><USER2> Does computer science need to be saved?

I agree that chatbots have tremendous pedagogical potential, especially if they could be programmed directly on the Web, rather than requiring complicated setup of a development environment.

Are you working on something?</comment>


Speech JavaScript API Specification (Speech Recognition for Web) - <AUTHOR> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2011OctDec/att-1696/speechapi.html

<comment><USER2> This looks promising, I've been working with the Emscripten[1] port of eSpeak and porting it to the browser and node.js [2] as a contributor (not author)

[1]: <https://github.com/kripken/emscripten>

[2]: <https://github.com/christopherdebeer/speak.js>

I'm curious how best one could participate/contribute to spec drafts like this, seems it's being steered by Google at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is Google going to open-source their speech recognition engine? Without that, this feels like standards white-washing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I assume, given the authors of the draft, that Chrome will have support for this soon?

Edit: Apparently, it already has it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3428329>

</comment><comment><USER5> Pretty exciting, particularly for doing command/control via speech recognition. I wish they would support BNF-style grammars the way Sphinx does.</comment>


The PlayStation2 vs. the PC (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/features/2000/04/ps2vspc/

<comment><USER2> > The PS2 is such a bizarre and powerful beast that it took me many hours of > poring over articles and slide presentations just to get my bearings with it > > When the programmers responsible for some of the greatest console games > ever made say that the PS2's learning curve is steep, you know something's > up.

Update this for 2006 with a s/PS2/PS3/g. I do remember articles about the Xbox and 360 touting its easy API interfaces, in stark contrast to Sony's.

Why did Sony keep creating such hard-to-code-for devices and yet end up with such a monstrous install base? It's the chicken and the egg, I suppose.

<comment><USER3> > Why did Sony keep creating such hard-to-code-for devices

While this was certainly true with the PS2 and PS3, Sony has largely moved away from this with the PS4. The Cell architecture of the PS3 was very difficult to effectively program. For the PS4, Sony spent a large amount of time interviewing game programmers asking "what would make it easier to development?" Hence the move to x86. Hence the simplified memory hierarchy, etc.

[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_play...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_playstation_4_with_mark_.php?print=1)

<comment><USER4> Ken Kutaragi who was the "father" of PlayStation and boss up to and including PS3 was known to be a big fan of developing exotic hardware. The PS4 is the post-Kutaragi machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Jon Stokes used to be my favorite tech-vulgarization writer, and he always provided good analyses. I'm bummed that he stopped writing at Ars, but I hear he's doing great stuff elsewhere (but not writing as much I'm afraid).

<comment><USER6> All the people I cared about reading are gone. It's just another tech news site now. It used to be an original content site too. There is still some original content, but it's nowhere near the caliber of stuff Stokes was putting out, and some of the newer stuff has a political slant to it that I don't care for. Jon always kept it technical.

<comment><USER7> When they did their last design, it was pretty obvious. They threw out their Microsoft and open source sections, and left the Apple section. These days I sarcastically refer to Ars as an Apple blog.

<comment><USER8> Do you remember who used to cover open source for them, and where they might be writing now? I really don't feel like Ars offers a comprehensive perspective of the industry any more.

<comment><USER7> Ryan Paul. [http://seg.phault.net/](http://seg.phault.net/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This brings back memories of working with PS2 dev boxes and reading Ars Technica. Back then it was a such a good source for this sort of information.

The PS2 was an incredible pain to develop for. Sony new it would be a hit no matter what they did. They really wanted it to have unique hardware. I also think they wanted it to be a machine that developers couldn't master in a singel development cycle. The way they released information about the VMUs later I think leads credence to the idea that they wanted the second and third life cycle of the device to show successive graphic improvements.

</comment><comment><USER10> How's it compare to the Saturn? I heard that was a nightmare to program for as well if you were doing anything 3D.

<comment><USER11> The big thing was just that the Saturn was supposed to be a badass 2D platform, with insanely powerful hardware sprite management. When Sega belatedly realized that 3D was the next big thing, they stapled on an extra CPU to give it enough power to handle 3D...but neglected to up the RAM or the CPU bandwidth. IIRC, it wasn't even theoretically possible to fully utilize both CPUs.

Very different situation than the Emotion Engine or Cell.

<comment><USER12> That's not true, it was meant to be a 3D console from the get-go.

However after they found out how powerful the Playstation was they quickly added extra power to make the console more comparable and that was where the complexity came from.</comment></comment></comment>


How a Boat-Plane Hybrid Shattered the Sound Barrier of Sailing - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/01/ff-paul-larsen-sailrocket/all/ <comment><USER2> "Vestas are one of the worlds leading developers and manufacturers of wind turbines for whom Malcolm is a senior test engineer." (<http://www.sailrocket.com/node/136>)

Very cool that a senior test engineer from the worlds largest with turbine manufacturers is able to take his domain knowledge and build a craft like Sailrocket.

As a side note: I have spent time on Vestas wind turbine blades (rappelling down them using ropes to inspect the fiberglass) and they are an amazing feat of engineering. You can't really appreciate their strength to weight ratio until you have been on the tip of a 40 meter blade.

<comment><USER3> Just curious, I frequently see turbine blades for wind installations hauled on a sort of "trailer" down the interstate. I put "trailer" in quotes because it's really two frames around the blade, one at the front and one at the rear. The strength of the trailer seems to be the blade. I'm always surprised when I see it, thinking surely that can't be safe? (But carbon fiber can be completely safe.)

Do you know about these? Would it be a good guess to say the blades are Vestas blades? Can you tell me more about their strength-to-weight?

<comment><USER4> There are some in my town too you see giant tubes and blades heading out of town towards the testing facility, 90 metre monsters.

It's funny this article is about wind I guess that's the point him being an engineer for Vestas. Here on the island I live on we often get windsurfers who come here because it's so windy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a sailor I cannot imagine what those speeds must feel like. I got a chance to sail a Hobie 16 on San Francisco Bay and it was pretty amazing to see how fast it could go and I doubt we even hit 20 knots. Nicely done Larsen, nicely done.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow this actually almost brought tears to my eye :D

These guys have been at it for so long it is hugely deserved !

listen to his voice on the record's video (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnjyusAgk8I> ) I think it helps get a sense of it must be like sailing at that kind of speed

<comment><USER7> Yeah it's pretty amazing. I wonder if his comparison to the X-1 is right. That now the barrier has been broken, we'll see even faster designs relatively rapidly. The margin by which he went over it seems to suggest it might. I also liked the part about the models disagreeing because there was no actual experimental data. It's easy to forget that sometimes today when computer models seem to explain everything.

<comment><USER8> If I interpret what I read correctly - that because of the new design there's no turning moment, and that hence there's no point at which the boat would capsize, and all energy is thus put into forward motion, that you can just put a bigger sail/wing on it to get more energy from the wind, and go even faster, linearly with the size of the wing (minus some extra weight overhead). Basically, if true and I'm not missing something, the only limit to the speed has become material strength and weight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pretty amazing stuff. Reminds me a lot about reading about the Pegasus class hydrofoils, reputed to have been capable of 55-60 knots

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_class_hydrofoil>

</comment><comment><USER10> For an idea of the kind of challenges they faced in the past:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ow8QbXhZJU>

</comment><comment><USER11> It's obviously inspired by a much older design, the "Hydroptere". Give credits where it's due ffs!

Which TFA doesn't mention at all.

Here's a Youtube video comparing the two:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=BE&v=qzkulFGa4Mc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=BE&v=qzkulFGa4Mc)

These kinds of boat, which are lifting out of water as they gain speed, are fast but can't really be used in real oceans unless the weather is nice because they can't handle big waves.

<comment><USER6> Sailrocket is no way inspired by Hydroptère, and in fact one might argue that they could not be more different:

Hydroptere works by countering the heeling moment caused by the force on it's sails and foils, with, basically, it's weight (it's weight times the distance between the center of gravity and the leeward foil) whereas Sailrocket works by having NO heeling moment and actually somewhat of a negative one, as the leeward hull can be seen lifting clear out of the water at speed.

Hydroptere lifts out of the water by using foils, which are basically wings that work in water (at the air/water interface actually, which causes a host of problems) whereas Sailrocket skims along on planing surfaces, just like a powerboat or a windsurf.

Sailrocket, as indicated in the article, owes a lot to Bernard Smith ( seminal work : [http://www.amazon.com/Sailloons-Fliptackers-High-Speed- Saili...](http://www.amazon.com/Sailloons-Fliptackers-High-Speed-Sailing- Library/dp/0930403657) )

Finally, Hydroptere works on both tacks (wind coming from either side) where Sailrocket only works on one tack. Some fascinating workarounds for this issues have already been worked out by Bernard Smith by the way.

<comment><USER12> +1.

Look carefully at this picture from the article:

[http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/2013/01/ff_superca...](http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/2013/01/ff_supercavitation5_large.jpg)

Check out the orientation of the "bridle lines" from either end of the wing, and the keel. When I saw that, it all went "click" in my head. This is just a wing tethered to the keel - like a kite, or a paragliger - the hull/fuselage and the spar and pods/floats are all just "unnecessary" bits, only used to hold the wing and keel in the required orientation to get up to operating speed. (I wonder if someone will build a version of this which jettisons all of the boat-like structure when it gets the keel and wing up to the speed needed?)

<comment><USER6> AFAIK there is one project that tries to remove all "unnecessary" bits, although it's just a model: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tEw_mlUh7g&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tEw_mlUh7g&feature=player_detailpage#t=231s)

Just a kite tied to a "water kite"

<comment><USER12> Cool! Thanks for that link.

That's very close to the ideas floating round in my head right now. Something very similar to that, a super efficient "kite" (think more like the SailRocket sail or a glider wing), "tethered" underwater using this 50+knot cavitation tolerant foil technology. I'm guessing it'd need a fair bit of "stuff" to get it up to the speed where the wing and foil start to operate effectively, wich might either be jettison-able floats/spars, or perhaps some technique where it gets launched/towed up to speed - kind of like how big wave surfers use jetski tow-ins to get on to big waves at speed - I wonder what the world record rules would say about a 70+knot "sailboat" that need to be towed up to 50_knots to work at all?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hacking Piano Learning - <AUTHOR>

Hello Everyone,
I have been part of HN community for over 2 years now and I really love learning from all the smart folks who hang around here. I have decided to learn to play Piano and I would love to know if my fellow hackers have any tips. Here are few questions I have:
1. Can I learn it on my own from the online courses OR should I get a teacher? [Time is a problem for me, I doubt I can get a teacher to teach me at 9.30pm.]
2. Any Piano learning course you guys recommend? I have found that Rocket Piano and PianoForAll are quite popular. Any experience with them?
3. Has anybody tried Piano Marvel software? http://www.pianomarvel.com/ The game mechanics built in to the software appeals to the geek inside me.
4. In my research, I came across http://www.pianofundamentals.com/. The author (Dr. Chang) claims that the popular 'Hanon' practices are not very useful. He also claims that learning using his method is 1000 times faster than other 'regular' method. Any experiences in this area?
5. Finally, I want to be able to learn to play by ear. Any good material on how I can achieve that? [Or am I toast because I am starting this at the age of 30 and not when I was 10?]
Thank you in advance for all your inputs! <comment><USER2> 1\. You may be able to get a teacher via skype in a timezone that is amenable to your time constraints. 5\. Its never too late, assuming you have patience. Practice practice practice. I think there are mobile apps which are basically flash-cards for sounds.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am going to try out the piano fundamentals book. I have 4yr old taking lessons. The preface seems to promise a lot. I am skeptical that you can hack the basic 10,000 hr expert path. Starting 10 yrs older than you.</comment>


Configuring and Using Scribe for Hadoop Log Collection - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloudera.com/blog/2008/11/02/configuring-and-using-scribe-for-hadoop-log-collection/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sold on scribe yet. I've been using syslog, and more recently syslog- ng, to do log filtering, routing, and aggregation for years.</comment>


Microsoft Office hits number one spot in Apple's App Store after just 12 hours - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/27/microsoft-office-hits-number-one-spot-in-apples-app-store-after-just-12-hours/

<comment><USER2> Anyone want to brainstorm on the strategic issues here? This had to have been a long development schedule. MS has been pushing their own phone for so long, taking their product to iOS is a big thing. Reminds me of when they initially took Office onto Mac.

At least they're willing to cannibalize their phone efforts. Seems pragmatic.</comment>


Ask HN: My jewelry business has ~500k yearly gross on Amazon. What's next? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for other effective forms of online selling and advertising for direct-jewelry.com, which is the online retail arm of a 30 year old jewelry wholesaler. We have plenty of budget to pay for ads if they are effective.
We've found Adwords to, at best, break even for us, pointed towards our site or Amazon. Amazon works great on its own and is growing as we develop our strategy.
I'm looking into Affiliate, consignment on Ebay, and other new sales sites. Any recommendations? <comment><USER2> Don't switch from Adwords yet: optimize. I don't know how your campaigns work, but we have clients in the same niche and run hundreds of campaigns each with hundreds of creative. Then look at the heuristics of buying cycles and ramp up in periods of lower buying cost and higher output. Also make sure you try Facebook, that also works very well when you undersand the targeting and optimization. Ads are mostly persistence and optimization. I would forgo affiliate. Try to avoid eBay as it will commoditized your product. Focus on the experience, your site is already quite nicely appointed. Also try specific branded experiences to draw people in, take a cut from how the open heart pendants are sold by a reputable retailer.

If I can answer any specific q's, hit me up at omid at Rennzer dot com

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi!

It sounds like you have a well established network of advertising that is working well for you currently!

Instead of looking to increase traffic, why not look to reduce traffic (i.e adwords cost) and A/B test actual conversion on your pages. Try to get more sales from fewer visitors.

Perhaps your Adwords are too broad, meaning that you get less qualified visitors. What can you do, to convince the customer to make a buying decision, today?

For new advertising methods, you could always focus on advertising on sites that pre-qualify the need to purchase jewelry. e.g popular wedding sites, people searching for expensive holidays (honeymoons), gift guides.

Analyse your online customer base. Are they all individuals, some businesses? Make a point of speaking to them, how they found you (who your referrals are coming from) what they liked about you, what occasion are they buying for. Go the extra mile for them.

If you notice patterns in your sales cycle how can you use this information (i.e more sales at the beginning of the month after pay-day) Find new ways to make your previous customers become repeat customers.

It sounds like you are already reaching far and wide with your Amazon business and that it's paying off.

I think if you use the information and data that you have at your fingertips you can ensure that you are making the most of the traffic sources you already have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your detailed advice! I will definitely consider opening up older campaigns to test them carefully. I figured however - if Amazon isn't converting profitably when I send very product specific ads to it, with millions spent on conversion testing, how could my site stand a chance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> hele842000 is on the right track with testing your conversion, but you need to go beyond A/B testing. The next step is multivariate testing, where you change several parts of your landing page at the same time. Finally, there is the holy grail of customization: having the landing page adjust to not only the ad that brought the person to you, but also that individual's buying style and demographics. That way, your landing page will be more like a rifle than a shotgun.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just an idea: are your adwords passing through your Amazon affiliate link? Could funnel some of the profits back if that's possible.

<comment><USER6> Against Amazon TOS, they won't pay out on these links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have you looked into SEO? Organic search can be a great source for quality traffic/customers

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but this takes time and we don't have experience targeting competitive words. We have a bit of long tail traffic (1000> month).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would you be interested in Drop Shipping for online retailers?

<comment><AUTHOR> 100% absolutely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice problem to have :)</comment>